Fright Squad

by Flint Maxwell

  She was pretty messed up, that was for sure, but vampirism came with its benefits. In about twenty-four hours’ time, with a good night’s sleep in her coffin, she’d be back to normal, wreaking havoc on the Midwest as if nothing happened.

  The only problem: she was now in the custody of BEAST and we didn’t intend to let her to have that good night’s sleep.

  I was about three feet away from her when she swiped at me with broken claws.

  “Settle down,” I said. From beneath my shirt, I fished out the crucifix that hung around my neck. Maddie and Zack did the same thing.

  Zack started waving it around and shouting, “The power of Christ compels you!” like in that movie The Exorcist, but Maddie didn’t let that go on for too long.

  “Wrong kind of monster,” I said.

  He knew this, of course.

  The she-vamp hissed again and even chanced a bite in my direction. I drove the crucifix close enough for her skin to start fizzling.

  “We can end this right now,” I said.

  “Do it,” the she-vamp spat. “Do it or die. Once I regenerate, I’ll stop at nothing until you’re dead and gone.”

  “Ooh, we’re shaking in our tighty-whities,” Zack said.

  “Dude, you still wear tighty-whities?” Maddie asked, looking at him.

  “No— Well, sometimes.” He shook his head. “Forget it.”

  Maddie chuckled.

  I didn’t. There was business to handle.

  To the she-vamp, I said, “You have a chance still, a chance at living.”

  I didn’t add: If we can call your existence living.

  She hissed again. Without the cape, like I said, earlier, it just wasn’t effective. Also…she wasn’t in any particular state for intimidation, that was for sure.

  “You talk and you’re looking at a nice cell in Northington. Maybe even some rehabilitation if you’re lucky,” I said.

  “I’ll never talk,” she said.

  I sighed, pulling out a pair of handcuffs and a mouth-trap. “Not during the car ride, no,” I said, “but when we get to HQ, you will.”

  “They’ll come for—” the she-vamp began. I didn’t let her finish. I clamped the mouth-trap over her chin and cuffed her.

  A mouth-trap was an apparatus designed by BEAST to prevent any unwanted bites and transferred diseases from supernatural creatures. It looked like the thing Hannibal Lector had worn in The Silence of the Lambs.

  The she-vamp didn’t put up a fight. I didn’t really know if she could. Maybe Northington Springs wasn’t sounding so bad after all.

  Lieutenant Walker called for backup and managed to conceal most of what went on in the hospital. Still there was a crowd of people surrounding Bubba’s discreet, windowless van. Standard issue for bringing in live monsters.

  And of course, there was the handful of staff that had seen the she-vamp in all her disgusting glory after she’d burst through the ceiling and made a run for it.

  Lieutenant Walker told me they had that handled, too. But I know what that meant. They’d use the same story they always used when a civ saw one of the creatures of the night. The woman was hopped up on drugs—bath salts, probably. Bath salts made people do terrible, unspeakable things. I remember the BEAST offices outside of Florida spun a zombie attack that had happened in Miami into a homeless-man-on-bath-salts story, and it had worked. No disease had spread, either, thank God. So yeah, America believed bath salts ninety percent of the time, but I thought Walker would have a hard time convincing the staff that bath salts had allowed this “homeless” woman to grow wings.

  Then again, humans saw what they wanted to see. Rarely would a supernatural attack such as this spread far and wide—because it would seem so absurd.

  Anyway, I couldn’t worry about that.

  Right now, we had a she-vamp with a secret to think about. What I wanted to know was why they had been trying to abduct dead bodies and if it somehow tied into Doctor Blood’s possible reemergence.

  We followed Bubba in Zack’s rented Ford.

  We arrived at HQ a little after one in the morning. By then, the adrenaline had worn off and I was dreading facing down the ugly mug of the she-vamp again.

  Bubba and Lyles went back to Steak & Shake for seconds.

  I filled out a handful of reports on the incident. As I was doing this, I could hear the wailing of the she-vamp through the “soundproof” walls.

  Downstairs, Lola’s face was as white as the moon. It wasn’t often we dragged vampires into the HQ, especially ones so damaged.

  “Don’t worry,” I told her.

  She just shook her head.

  The interrogation room was a little ways past the armory. Storm poked his head out of the door when I walked by.

  In his Southern drawl, he said, “What’s the matter? My stake ain’t do the trick?”

  “No,” I said. “Your stake did just fine. Make sure you ask Zack what he did with it.”

  Storm cocked his head. I cringed, thinking about the shot below the belt on Rip, then I felt a little bad over the fact he was gone. Something had gotten into the vamp, something even more unnatural than vampirism. He wasn’t a bad guy. Maybe a little on the sketchy side of the law, but he wasn’t a killer. Something had made him act like that—or someone…someone like Doctor Blood.

  In the interrogation room, Zack and Maddie chained the she-vamp to a chair, which had been bolted to the ground. She hissed cold breath out of her nose because the mouth-trap wouldn’t let her screech. Still, it was loud. Too loud.

  Maddie came out of the room, looking as squeamish as Lola at the front desk.

  “I hate this,” she said. “It’s not right. It’s dangerous.”

  I nodded.

  It was.

  Then Zack came out and he was saying, “I can’t believe I finally hit something.”

  “I wouldn’t be too proud of that,” Maddie said. “There’s no honor in shooting a vampire in the balls.”

  Zack shrugged. “Balls or not, I don’t think he was using them too much on account of his vampirism.”

  I slapped Zack on the back as we looked at the vampire through the one-way glass. Already, her leg was straightening up and her detached arm was getting closer and closer to the knob of bone protruding from her shoulder. Not the best sight.

  “Focus,” I said. “Focus.”

  About five minutes later, Octavius stepped in. His eyes were red and blotchy, like he’d been snoozing. The little hair he had left on his head was tousled. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror and smoothed the frazzled strands back down while simultaneously adjusting his tie.

  I wanted to get him alone so we could talk about Doctor Blood and what digging Octavius had done all day, but I knew we had bigger fish to fry at the moment.

  “She’s all yours, Captain,” Zack said, grinning.

  “Bubba briefed me on what happened, but I’ll need your reports by Monday,” Octavius said. He looked at the she-vamp and a ripple of disgust surged through his features. “You know what?” he said, “You three have proven your worth around here. I think I’ll let you do the honors.”

  I could tell he was just too tired for an interrogation.

  Maddie stepped forward, her eyes wide and glistening. No fear in them. “I’m honored, sir,” she said.

  Octavius tried a smile. It looked out of place on his worn face.

  Zack was licking his chops, ready to dig in. “Okay,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “how do you want to do this? Good cop, bad cop? The Three Musketeers? Texas Omelet-style?”

  “Texas Omelet-style?” I asked.

  “That sounds dirty,” Maddie said.

  Zack chuckled. “No, it’s not—”

  “Let’s just go in and talk to her,” Maddie said. “No need for any particular style.”

  “Okay…” Zack said, “but I’m telling you, she’s gonna be a tough cookie to crack.”

  “Looks like she’s already cracked a little,” Maddie said, pointin
g at her various injuries.

  “Good one,” Zack said.

  “I’ll be right out here if you need me,” Octavius said.

  We nodded. I’ll admit, I was feeling a little trepidation. I’d never grilled anyone before, and if what we’d seen on the parking deck was any inclination, that fanged mouth wasn’t in the mood for chit-chat. But then I thought of my dad. If he could’ve gotten that fanged mouth moving then so could I.

  “Hold on,” Zack said as he walked toward the door. “I have a plan.”

  Maddie and I shook our heads. If Zack had a plan, it was going to be good.

  When he came back after scrounging around in the armory, he had two glasses of blood and a UV lamp. The third trick up his sleeve, he said, after a phone call, would be here in fifteen to twenty minutes.

  “That’s your trick? Blood?” Maddie asked.

  A smile crept across his face. “Oh, not just any blood. Holy blood!”

  “Like Jesus’s blood?” I asked, arching an eyebrow, poking fun at him.

  He shook his head. “Don’t be silly. It’s a concoction of my own. I’m a regular supernatural bartender.”

  “So you mixed holy water into a cup of blood. You don’t think the vamp isn’t going to sniff that out, Zack?” Maddie asked.

  I held up the other cup, peered into its contents. You couldn’t tell the difference.

  “That’s why this one isn’t spiked,” Zack said, pointing.

  Maddie nodded sarcastically. “Okayyy,” she said. “Is this Texas-Omelet Style?”

  He shook his head, dead serious.

  “And the UV lamp? Are you growing pot again?” I asked him.

  He looked from me to Octavius then back to me with wide eyes. But if Octavius was listening, he wasn’t showing it. “Dude, that was one time,” he whispered.

  I shrugged.

  “Calm down. I’m not growing any more pot.” Then, he mumbled, “I have a guy for that…”

  Octavius’s mind was elsewhere. He studied the she-vamp intently. The way his skin had paled, I thought he might be scared. But Octavius scared? No way. This had to do with what he found out earlier that day. What was it exactly?

  I moved my thoughts away from Octavius’s exhausted and scared features.

  There was a she-vamp with a secret, a secret I needed to find out.

  “You ready?” I asked Maddie and Zack.

  “Maybe. I feel like we should have a different plan—” Maddie said.

  “I have a plan!” Zack replied.

  “A better plan…” Maddie said.

  Zack smiled. “Trust in me, Maddie. I haven’t failed us yet.”

  Well, I didn’t know about that, but it wouldn’t do any good to tell him otherwise. The lucky stake shot on Rip had gone to his head, I knew. I guessed, as long as he was confident, that wasn’t a bad thing.

  I pulled the windowless door that led into the interrogation room open. The smell of the fear and sickness hit me, but when the she-vamp saw what Zack held in his hands, her twisted face lightened. A nose that had once looked like a bat’s in the basement level of City Hospital but now looked like a human’s nose twitched. One of her eyes hadn’t gone back to her human disguise. It was as black as onyx and peering at us with hate and confusion while the other eye, a pale blue, was welcoming and human. Her wings hadn’t retracted. I figured that was due to her nasty fall and the four bullets I’d sent her way.

  I eased around the table and undid her mouth-trap, but I let it fall into her lap. No way I was getting my fingers that close to her teeth.

  “Okay, she-vamp,” I said, taking on the role of bad-cop, “we can do this the easy way or the difficult way.”

  The she-vamp worked her jaw. The broken fang hadn’t regenerated yet, either.

  “Hard way,” Zack corrected from behind me.

  I shrugged. “Hard way. Whatever.”

  The table sat between us and the she-vamp. Zack put the glasses of blood and the light down at the edge. We took our seats. Unfortunately, I wasn’t thinking right and where Zack and Maddie had turned their chairs around and straddled them like badass cops, I sat down like a goober. Quickly, I got up and matched my coworkers.

  “I will die before I talk,” the she-vamp said, smirking.

  “Well, either way, I’ll be happy,” Zack said.

  This took the she-vamp back. “Don’t you want to know? If I die, you’ll never know.”

  Zack shrugged, picked up the glass, and moved it in a circle like someone at a wine tasting event. He even leaned in and inhaled. Judging by his face, it didn’t smell too good.

  “What are you doing?” I said out of the side of my mouth. “We’ve got this.”

  “You don’t got anything,” the she-vamp said.

  “Yeah… Abe, vamps have, like, really good hearing,” Maddie said.

  To my left was our reflections—just Maddie, Zack, and me. The she-vamp, of course, didn’t have a reflection.

  Behind that pane of glass, my boss watched us and I knew he was probably comparing me to my father, even if he didn’t mean to.

  I had to step up, had to get this vamp to talk.

  Then, the intercom buzzed. It was Octavius’s voice. He sounded…bewildered, to say the least.

  “Uh, Zackary? Lola just called and said there’s a pizza delivery guy walking around aimlessly on the ground level. You wouldn’t have anything to do with that, would you?”

  He got up. “Excuse me,” he said. “Wanna give me a hand, Abe?”

  Octavius buzzed us out. “What is the meaning of this?” he asked.

  “You’ll see,” Zack said.

  When we were out of Octavius’s ear shot, Zack leaned over and whispered, “I ordered pizza…and garlic bread.”

  Oh Jesus, I thought.

  Rig-R-Tony’s Pizza was a seedy place off West Market Street, settled between a tanning bed where a woman’s hair once caught on fire and a cell phone store that one-thousand percent sold stolen stuff out of the back room. Despite their location, Tony’s made a hell of a pie, I’ll admit.

  Tony, the owner, was a little Italian guy who used to work on an oil rig, hence the Rig-R in Rig-R-Tony’s…oh, and there was the clever play on rigatoni, too.

  I went up to the ground level with Zack. The delivery guy wasn’t Tony, but an old man with a goatee I didn’t know.

  “You don’t look too good, fella,” he said to me.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “$23.45,” he said to Zack.

  “Put it on my tab,” Zack said.

  The delivery driver frowned. “Ain’t no tabs.”

  Zack sighed. “You take card?”

  “What do I look like, a fucking robot?” the man said.

  “All I have in my wallet is my bank card and a fifty,” Zack said. “You got anything, Abe?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  Zack looked at the driver. “You have change for a fifty?”

  “Not much, man. Been a slow night. But,” the driver winked, “I do take tips.”

  He dug out the fifty, handed it over.

  “It’s my lucky night. Thanks, kid!” the delivery driver said.

  “Don’t spend it all in one place,” Zack grumbled. He handed me the pizza and the garlic bread. The heat coming from the bottom of the box nearly singed my fingertips off.

  “Ooh, pizza?” Lola said when we went back.

  “Want a slice?” I offered her. Zack glared at me. I ignored this.

  She hesitated, looked at the clock. “I better not. I’m watching my figure.”

  “You look perfect,” I said.

  She smiled. “Okay, maybe one slice.” I gave her one, then it was back to the interrogation room.

  Before we went in, Zack offered Octavius a slice, too. He looked like he was starved, but he refused and was obviously a little irritated at Zack’s antics.

  I opened the door, walked in with my back facing Maddie and the vamp.

  “Since we’re gonna be here for awhile, I figured
I’d get dinner—or a midnight snack, if you will,” Zack said. “I’m starving.”

  “This is your master plan?” Maddie asked. “Pizza?” She was shaking her head. It seemed like she’d been doing a lot of that recently.

  Then I set the box down on the table. The she-vamp sneered at it. Exactly the reaction we wanted, I assumed. The warmth steamed up the table’s surface. No longer could we see our reflections in it.

  “I say we get a stake,” Maddie said and peered at the she-vamp with a look that reminded me of Tom, the cat from Tom & Jerry, right before he was about to catch the mouse. “A nice sharp one.”

  “No, no,” Zack said. “Me and— What’s your name? Never caught it.”

  The she-vamp turned her head away. “I’ll not tell you that.”

  “Okay. Then I’ll call you Dracula,” Zack said.

  “A fitting name,” I added.

  “I’m a female,” Dracula said, gritting her teeth at the mention of the world’s most famous vampire.

  “No, you’re technically dead. A dead thing doesn’t have a gender, I’m pretty sure. Just because a couch has a pair of plump pillows doesn’t mean I want to stick my wang in it, ya dig?” Zack said.

  “Oh no, Zack…are you humping couches again?” Maddie asked.

  “Okay. Now that never happened,” Zack said, glaring at Maddie. “At least not while I was sober…”

  I ignored this banter and disturbing imagery as best as I could.

  “So, Dracula…or she-Dracula,” I began, but the she-vamp made a motion for me, restrained by her chair.

  Vampires hated being called Dracula. I mean, absolutely hated it. You’d have better luck calling a werewolf Michael J. Fox or a ghost Casper or something. Because Dracula kind of ruined the way people thought of vampires. Made them, as I’ve heard before, a bit prissy.

  “Okay, Dracula,” Zack said, “we’re just gonna eat, then we can get back down to business.”

  “Your time is short. I’ll regenerate and then I’ll rip your heads off like we ripped that cop’s off,” she-Dracula said.

  “I wouldn’t be proud of that,” Zack said. With calm hands, he opened the pizza box first. It was pepperoni, practically more grease than anything else. Then he opened the garlic bread’s box and the noise this she-vamp made sounded like a demon singing karaoke.